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thearena2014-05-17 03:17 pm
etcircenses) wrote in thearena2014-05-17 03:17 pm
Entry tags:
- ! arena 10,
- cassandra marko,
- clara murphy,
- commander shepard,
- roland deschain,
- the grand highblood,
- the signless,
- ✘ alex murphy,
- ✘ brainiac 5,
- ✘ bucky barnes (616),
- ✘ carlos the scientist,
- ✘ clementine,
- ✘ co,
- ✘ courfeyrac,
- ✘ cuthbert allgood,
- ✘ deanna winchester,
- ✘ diana ladris,
- ✘ donatello,
- ✘ enjolras,
- ✘ fili,
- ✘ gannicus,
- ✘ hanji zoe,
- ✘ hawkeye pierce,
- ✘ ian chesterton,
- ✘ jack frost,
- ✘ jaime reyes,
- ✘ joel,
- ✘ kevin,
- ✘ marius pontmercy,
- ✘ max guevara,
- ✘ nasir,
- ✘ natasha romanoff,
- ✘ orc,
- ✘ r,
- ✘ red sonja,
- ✘ riley abel,
- ✘ rock lee,
- ✘ rokk krinn,
- ✘ ruffnut thorston,
- ✘ some ovmennet,
- ✘ starkiller,
- ✘ steve rogers,
- ✘ susannah dean,
- ✘ topher brink,
- ✘ venus dee milo,
- ✘ vriska serket
ARENA 10-Placid Hollow
The Tributes are taken early in the morning, most of their support teams seeming in good cheer as they dress them in warm clothes, getting them to their tubes. There is obvious comfort in the familiar for the prep teams, and they chatter with, or in some cases, over the heads of their Tributes as they get them ready and load them up.
20
19
18…
If the Tributes could see the area they are passed up into, they would see a deeply overgrown, dilapidated town green, with a large bandstand rotting away in the middle. The spoils of the cornucopia are not gathered in one spot, instead scattered throughout the thigh high grass and weeds around the town green.
Around the edge of the green, the old business stand a silent sentry, looming out of the fog as it thins and winds into them, providing much desired cover.
8
7
6…
But the Tributes cannot see the ground around them. The fog, thicker even than it will be in the rest of the arena, makes the world small around them. The sound of the count down echoes strangely, the tributes seeming too close as the fog brings sounds of their breath, their coughing, the snap of twigs under their feet right to ears of the other Tributes. But with the fog bringing visibility down to only a few feet, it's hard to tell what is a true danger, and what is only the fog playing tricks on them,.
3
2
1
The gong rings out, and the countdown's voice announces "the Arena is now open". The Games have begun.
19
18…
If the Tributes could see the area they are passed up into, they would see a deeply overgrown, dilapidated town green, with a large bandstand rotting away in the middle. The spoils of the cornucopia are not gathered in one spot, instead scattered throughout the thigh high grass and weeds around the town green.
Around the edge of the green, the old business stand a silent sentry, looming out of the fog as it thins and winds into them, providing much desired cover.
7
6…
But the Tributes cannot see the ground around them. The fog, thicker even than it will be in the rest of the arena, makes the world small around them. The sound of the count down echoes strangely, the tributes seeming too close as the fog brings sounds of their breath, their coughing, the snap of twigs under their feet right to ears of the other Tributes. But with the fog bringing visibility down to only a few feet, it's hard to tell what is a true danger, and what is only the fog playing tricks on them,.
2
1
The gong rings out, and the countdown's voice announces "the Arena is now open". The Games have begun.
no subject
A thudding off in the distance catches her attention, though she can't see where it's coming from with how dense the fog is. She momentarily considers stopping and trying to figure out who or what it is until she remembers the clips of the beginning of previous arenas. How people were slaughtered by their competition. She doesn't want that to be her. So she keeps moving, noting the fact that the sound is just getting louder and that there's a person's silhouette appearing in the mist. At least she thinks it's a person, she can't be sure. And it's coming fast. She stops and manages to get out of the way, noticing the briefest flash of silver and is about to run off when she hears him say her name.
Clara feels as if her heart's leapt into her throat as she slowly turns to face him. Alex is miles away from the way he was the last time she saw him, the matte black exchanged for silver and the fact that he sounds so much more like himself than he did as he left the station.
She really doesn't want to know what it says about her subconscious that she's dreaming about being yanked away from home, spending a few days to deal with that and mentally prepare for a death match while grieving over Alex, and then finding him also fighting in said death match.
Even if this is a terrible nightmare that her brain's cooked up as a way to deal with her grief, there's a selfish part of her that's simply enjoying the fact that the version of Alex in front of her is closer to the man she knew and loved than the version of him that's popped up in her other nightmares as of late.
"Hi baby," she finally manages to get out, almost completely at a loss about what to say.
no subject
“Hi,” Alex says, voice taut, sounding like a stranger’s. He acts. Doesn’t think about it. Just reacts, like all the times he’d been shot at – only instead of just his life on the line, it’s Clara’s too, and he doesn’t stop to think about weight. That he can’t lift her and run at a good clip. What he does is picture picking up Clara and hauling her to safety.
It happens fast, Alex watching past the error messages as if someone else is controlling his arm. His hand comes out, loops around Clara’s waist, and sweeps his wife into the crook of his elbow. There’s no strain. No tension in muscles or his back. It’s as easy as picking up a book and it would scare him, any other day. Alex doesn’t give himself that kind of time. Without another word, he takes off into the fog again. Fissures open up in the street as if there’s been an earthquake, tall weeds poking out the cracks. Alex clears them as the visor tells him it’s "rerouting", whatever that’s supposed to mean, his breathing easy as he leaves the Cornucopia behind and abandoned cars begin to pop up here and there. A forgotten umbrella. A suitcase spilled open like an afterthought.
More and more buildings resolve out of the fog bank. Alex goes for a two-story one, the door so damaged that he doesn’t even need to kick it open. A generous nudge of his shoulder and it swings open on rusty hinges. Alex finally sets his wife down. Something twists in his shoulder and gives a soft purr.
“Better barricade the door, check if anyone got in here before us.” What Alex really wants to do is run his hand over Clara’s cheek, let her know that despite the suit, he’s still him. Tell her that he’ll get her out of here. But Alex is going into what Clara called Cop Mode right now and that means checking the exits, clearing any corners where any punk with a trigger-finger and luck could tag you. “Stay close to me.”
no subject
He's faster than her (he always has been, she used to rib him about slowing down because she could never keep up with him and his ridiculously long legs), faster than she remembers. Which is the only reason she doesn't yell at him to put her down once she shakes off the shock from being snatched up so easily, as if she were a ragdoll instead of a person (she knows his strength shouldn't surprise her as much as it does. She remembers the email Dr. Norton had sent her right after Alex had been okayed to come home from China and that there was a mention that she'd need to be patient with Alex when he was at home as he adjusted to his new strength. The fact that the email had been for nothing, considering he had only come home once before she lost him again, hurt more than she could say).
Before she knows it, they're inside a house and she's back on her feet. Clara almost thinks they might be able to take a moment and talk or at least not hop right onto the next thing. Even though she knows that, logically, they need to so that they have a safe, defensible spot for the time being, she'd love a moment to just wrap her head around this newest curveball her dreamscape's decided to throw at her.
"I don't think anyone could've gotten here faster than we did." The fact that, damaged as it may've been, the fact that the door was closed is a pretty good sign of that. And, as much as she respects his ability to slip into Cop Mode at a moment's notice, right now she doesn't need Detective Alex Murphy of DCPD, she needs Alex, her husband. "Can we just stop for a moment? Please?"
no subject
“Watch the windows. We can talk while I work.”
He starts to slide the Cornucopia bag from his shoulder – has to work it off him when it gets stuck on armor plating – and hands it to her. She could go through that, see what they got. He’ll make sure no Tributes come gunning through the front door.
It’s not the way he would’ve had this reunion if it was up to him. Ideally she wouldn’t see him in this rig, this damn suit that makes him think he’s not even human whenever he catches reflections of the thing. Hell, she shouldn’t even be here! Alex turns, glancing at his wife with her hair sticking out of the pony tail it’s been swept up in, trying to read her face. After a moment, he steps away and picks up the heavy couch from the living room. It might be dusted with a layer of moss but it’s still pretty heavy. Or it should be. He’d eyeballed it as at least over a hundred pounds, the kind you just hired movers for and let them deal with it, and yet he’s able to lift it with about as much trouble as Clara.
Alex turns it over, the servos in his arms whirring as he props it up against the door. That thing won’t be budging. Hopefully.
Every now and then he’ll glance at Clara silently, wondering what to say. She recognized him despite the armor, despite the visor getting in the way, and he has to wonder if she knows how he got like this. There’s not much he can do about the windows right now aside from checking the locks, which seem to be rusted shut, and hoping he can board them up if he can find a hammer and nails. The backdoor to what might’ve been a garage has collapsed on itself. No one’s coming through there, at least.
no subject
So Clara accepts her defeat and sits on the dusty floor to begin taking inventory of what he managed to grab. There's water, not a lot, but enough that they can probably make it last a couple days if they really stretch it out. A collapsible shovel with a surprisingly heavy metal blade and some scissors, both of which could probably be used as weapons in a pinch. Candles, bleach, some wire, and a fire starting kit that looks like a descendant of the one in their garage.
She glances up and notices that the couch is in place against the door and Alex is examining the locks on the windows.
"I thought I had lost you," Clara says quietly as she examines the scissors. There are other things she knows need to be said, probably on both sides, but that's the first thing that manages to make it out of her mouth.
no subject
“I’m fine,” Alex tries to ignore the big graphene elephant in the room making clicks and purrs. “I’m okay.”
He’s aware that’s not the point because that’s obvious. He’s repeating himself. His face is there. But even Alex doesn’t know how bad it is under the suit and she might not know either. He blows out a sigh, reaching up out of habit to run a hand through his hair before he remembers he doesn’t even know if he has hair under the suit. His hand clanks against the visor, the frowning deepening as he drops his hand. Right, yeah. That. The visor finally slides back from his face: same stress lines, something behind the brown eyes instead of that blankness that had looked right at Clara at the press conference that, to Alex, hasn’t happened.
She’s laid out the stuff in the floor: shovel, scissors, water and some other stuff that, he hopes, can help keep Clara alive. The thing if Alex is used to roughing it, to an extent. But doing it in the middle of a city he’s lived in all his life is totally different. Knowing his wife’s at home and he’s got a kid and taxes and at the end of the day, it’s a job. It’s not some game. Alex tries again, working to keep his voice level for both their sakes.
“They, uh, they said this thing,” Alex gestures at the suit, his wrist rotating instead of flopping like it should’ve, “It’s like life support or something. So I’m not going anywhere.”
no subject
Instead she puts the scissors down, stands up, and walks over to him, locking her eyes onto Alex's the moment his visor goes up. Despite everything, a small, relieved ghost of a smile blooms across her lips as soon as she sees that there's a spark of life in his eyes that wasn't there the last time she properly looked at him face-to-face. That smile mostly falters the moment he brings up the suit.
"Yeah, it's something like that," It isn't the suit that makes her smile fall. While she obviously wishes that things were the way they were before the bombing, she had done enough research on her own in the months afterward to know that what Dr. Norton was offering was Alex's best chance at having something resembling the life he led before. Sure, she still hasn't completely adjusted to seeing him like this in person, but she knows enough about it to know that it's, essentially, as much a part of him as his eyes are or his hair (and so many other things, though she refuses to acknowledge that part right now) had been.
But the fact that he's talking about the suit like it's totally new to him is, if she's being honest, a little terrifying. How can he not know? The only time he came home, he knew what he could do and what had happened to him. What had been done to him (and that she had signed off on it). "Alex, what's the last thing you remember before you woke up in the Capitol?"
no subject
His eyebrows draw together as he thinks back. “Coming home, tucking David into bed. About to,” he pauses, not feeling like he’s down with discussing their sex life right now. “Kissing you. The damn car was acting up again, so I went outside to deal with it. Why?”
It’s pretty cut and dry, except he doesn’t see any kicking point where he could get so badly injured he’d need some Star Trek suit to stay alive. Or how they stuck him in this thing and then shipped him off to a place that looks like it’s on another planet. Granted, he could’ve been sedated for that last bit, but still. If Clara is doing what he did when he woke up in the Capitol, trying to sniff around for patterns, clues, she won’t get anything all that helpful from his end. Alex glances out the window, where the dirt on the glass is at its thinnest, and all he can see is fog and more fog. The few times he gets the impressions of shadows flitting past makes a muscle in his jaw tighten.
The other Tributes are still out there. And according to some of the footage he’s seen of the past Arenas – he wishes he hadn’t – any of them could easily take out his wife.
Alex moves to stand between Clara and the window. As creepy, uncomfortable and plain weird as this suit is, the one thing going for it is that it’s built like a tank.
no subject
Clara's never been very good at breaking bad news to people. She had gotten better at it over the past few months, what with having to give David and various friends and family members updates about Alex since that night. But for the most part, except for David and sometimes Jack, she only had to break the news over the phone and didn't have to worry about physically keeping her composure. All she usually had to worry about was keeping her voice steady and as calm as possible. When it came to David, she never even attempted to give him the full truth unless it was completely necessary in an effort to protect him as much as possible, so it was fairly easy to keep her calm. And Jack...she hadn't even bothered to keep her cool with him. To be fair, neither of them had really tried to do so in their weekly to bi-weekly meetups where they drank too much beer and spilled their guts.
"There was an explosion. Someone...someone planted a bomb on your car and when you went to check it..." Clara's voice trails off as she tries to figure out how to explain the rest of it. Is there even a good way to say You were horribly burned, paralyzed, possibly deaf, blinded in one eye, and lost an arm and leg so I gave OmniCorp the okay to do this to you because there wasn't really any other option? "You were...you were hurt and this was your best chance."
Despite how much she's trying to keep from crying, she's coming close to failing miserably from the way her vision's currently blurring from the tears in her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Alex."
no subject
He says it flat, knowing that doesn’t mean anything. It explains how he got in his suit, why he’s suddenly on some high-tech life support when he’d been fine last he checked. Alex almost asks how bad and decides he doesn’t want to know the details. It’s one of those rare times where suddenly he has all these questions crowding in and he doesn’t want to ask any of them. Was Clara there? She wasn’t hurt, was she? How long ago was this? And why did her voice wobble when she said “best chance”? He stands there staring down at Clara, trying to work his way through this. Car bomb. They wanted him dead. They wanted his wife and kid dead. A car bomb at home.
Someone wanted to send a message. Alex could make an educated guess who.
He swallows, mouth going dry. As if from a distance he watches as his hand comes up, hesitating before he touches Clara’s shoulder gently. She’s got that look, the one that says she’s trying really hard not to cry in front of him, in front of David, but it’s not working.
“You – you made the right call,” Alex tries to look on the bright side. “It’s just some new life support rig. Bet it’ll come off when I’m good to go.”
He seems to lean on that when, as if it’s just a matter of time when he won’t be feeling claustrophobic in some suit that he knows, instinctively, is too tight, too impossibly thin, to contain his body. He was skinny, but not that skinny. So he leans on that when like a crutch, like if he says it out loud, that’ll make it real. Just temporary. All he has to do is make it out of the Arena with his wife and he can get out of it. Go back to normal. Alex’s breathing hitches slightly, his armored fingers tightening against Clara’s shoulder.
no subject
And she can feel the sob that's clawing at her throat and is blocking the words she needs to say. She wishes she could let him live with his delusion that the suit's eventually going to come off and he'll be fine. Fuck, she wishes she could have that delusion too, because it's so much kinder than the reality of the situation. But she can't let him live with that kind of false hope, it would be too cruel. If she tells him the truth, at least, he'll be hearing it from her instead of from some stranger in the Capitol.
It briefly strikes her that this doesn't seem like a dream. Between the fact that she's never seen Alex in the silver suit and she's pretty damn sure that her subconscious doesn't hate her enough to put her through a dream where she has to explain all of this to him. Dreams where she has to beg him for forgiveness, sure, she's had plenty of those, but never one where anything like this has happened. Honestly, if it weren't for David and the whole death match thing, she could almost accept this as her new reality if it meant she'd get to have Alex back.
"It..." Clara manages to get out before a small, strangled sob comes out of her. "It isn't coming off, baby. It's part of you." Most of him, really, though she feels like that shouldn't need to be said. "We'll get through this, I promise."
no subject
“Part of me? What’re you talking about?” Alex blurts. For a moment he actually forgets about the Hunger Games, that rush for the Cornucopia and thinking any one of those Tributes could stab him in the face, and everything seems to tunnel in on Clara, her lip quivering as she fails to choke back that sob. “...It’s temporary.”
He seems like he’s trying to convince himself more than anything. He’s managed to coast by so far by telling himself there’s no way he’d be stuck grafted in this thing like a sardine in the most fancy tin-can ever and that’s worked. So far. It wasn’t like he’d spent a lot of time conscious to think about it when he was sedated in that cradle. Alex’s fingers continue unconsciously to tighten on Clara’s shoulder, the joints in his robotic fingers responding to the signals it’s receiving from his brain. There’s no Dr. Norton to coax him down in his feed. No instant access to his transmitter. It’s just Alex and Clara in some house that looks like it’d been abandoned for decades, with a door that’s barricaded by a damn couch and windows that would be painfully easy to chuck a rock through.
His Adam’s Apple would bob nervously if he still had one.
Alex stares down at Clara and it seems as if he’s forgotten how to blink, the blood draining from his face. He wants to believe her. Really, he does. But when he looks down and entertains the idea he’s going to be stuck in this thing for months, years, and suddenly it’s a lot harder. It’s a promise he’s not sure she can keep.
no subject
Alex's grip on her shoulder finally slides from uncomfortable to kind of painful, making her wince. Clara's briefly torn on whether she should try to tough it out and hope he notices and risk possibly getting her collarbone broken, or tell him that he's hurting her and probably throw almost any chances of him touching her anytime in the near future out the window. Of course, if he were to do some actual damage to her...she can't let him live with that.
She tries to find the words, looking away from his face and instead looking down at her feet, noticing the start contrast between her heavy boots and his uncovered feet. There has to be a way to say it that won't scare him off. Something that isn't Alex, you're hurting me, because those are the exact opposite of what he needs to hear right now. "Could you not squeeze my shoulder so hard?"
no subject
“So…” Alex’s voice wavers, forcing him to swallow and try again. “These aren’t my arms and legs. That’s what you’re saying.”
He drops his hand to his side. One hand he thinks might still be his. There’s skin. The other one might be prosthetic. It might not be the only one. Alex’s still blinking rapidly as he struggles to adjust to the news. Can’t get out of this. If – when – they get back to Detroit, he can kiss their old life goodbye.
Alex closes his eyes. He thinks about Clara’s wince passing across her face and, this is the part he could’ve done without, the HUD brings it up in a tab as if he needs to see it again. When he opens his eyes, he’s back in Cop Mode again, because that’s the only way he knows how to deal with his world being shattered. He keeps his distance from Clara, half-turning away from her as he clears his throat, voice feeling strange. It’s easier this way.
“Doesn’t change the fact we’re stuck here. Let’s check the upstairs and see if there’s anything we can use.”
no subject
"Yeah, that's...that's what I'm saying." The only good thing about right now is that, at least, she doesn't feel like she's going to be fighting back sobs anymore for...a little while, at least.
Clara almost reaches out to grab a hold of Alex's flesh and blood hand, as if she believes that holding onto him can make her believe that any part of this is okay, or at the very least let him know that she's here for him, no matter what. She only stops is when she hears him turn away, which pulls her gaze back up to his face.
"Do you have something specific in mind?"
timeskip to night?
Alex makes a weird gesture with his shoulders like he's trying to shrug and finds the joints don't quite work the same way he's used to: it's this strange little jiggle of his shoulder plates and he has to wonder if he even has shoulder to begin with. Alex glances at the windows. No one's tried rattling the doors yet. Alex points at the windows. The neighborhood Clara's used to, having big open windows was a selling point. Now he wishes these had bars.
"We need to get these boarded up. We do that, I think we can sleep a little easier." What he really means to say is Clara can sleep easier. Him, he's planning to stay up all night if he has to. Although looking at his wife, the way her eyes are wide and still glistening with tears, and he thinks she might not be doing much sleeping either.
no subject
-----
With how thick the fog is, Clara expects it to be hard to tell whether it's day or night outside. She's wrong. While the daytime in this place is dull and gray, nighttime is pitch black, at least from what she can see out the window of the small upstairs bedroom that looked like it could belong to a boy around David's age (though, thankfully, without all of the trappings that would make her think of David, save a hockey stick that had been shoved in a corner with a baseball bat, both of which were now downstairs along with a mostly dead book of matches, the can of soup she had been given by the stranger she stumbled into before Alex found her, and a number of other things they'd found upstairs that could be of use). Fumbling in the dark to grab the pillows and blankets off the small bed, she manages to do so before making the now-familiar trek downstairs.
She'd done this enough over the course of the afternoon and evening that doing it in the dark with her arms full was only slightly unnerving. Clara knew enough by now to know that one of stairs near the middle had a dip to the left and that the third step from the bottom squeaked.
"Nice job on the windows." Not that she can tell with how dark it is, but she can assume so as she adds to the little nest of blankets and pillows that she's built on the floor since their first trip upstairs. It briefly crosses her mind that David would probably complain that they're wasting the pillows and blankets by doing that instead of building a pillow fort.
"I wonder how David's doing." The thought's come to mind a lot over the past week, but it's the first time she's actually said it aloud.
Gonna lead into the attack by the faceless walker
He refuses to call it his new body. He does wonder if it's at least got a mute button: he can't be the only one fed up with all the damn sound it makes.
"Thanks," Alex says. He falls quiet at the mention of David. It's something he's alternated between stewing on and wishing he didn't have to worry about. It's not exactly his shining moment as a dad. "Hope they've realized we're gone. Bet you Jack's already checking up on him."
He even had the keys. They'd talked about this in the car, during those long days where they sat on their butts waiting for a contact, and naturally stuff like What if I die came up. Tying up loose ends. Watching out for loved ones. All that. If there was anyone in the world he trusted to look after his family, it was Jack. It's just...in all the scenarios Alex ran in his head, this wasn't it. He'd expected to get shot on the job, leaving Clara and David. Both of David's parents going MIA, though. Didn't see that one coming.
Alex turns back to the window, aware of Clara trying to get comfortable in her blanket nest. It'd be that kind of spontaneous level of sexy if they were in their house's living room. This one smells like mold and rot.
"I think someone's coming our way," Alex hisses with that quiet tone of voice that says he's hoping she won't panic. He watches as a shape comes out from the darkness, the fog lifting just enough to see a vaguely man-shaped shadow walking. There's something off about it, something about the arms and legs being...wrong. No sign of a weapon yet.
The shape stops by the window, where there's only a few half-rotted boards between them and it.
no subject
The mention of someone being outside made her stomach twist. Would someone really do that? Try to break into a house and pick off the competition at night while they slept? She wants to believe that no one would do that, but this is a massive fight to the death and the idea doesn't surprise her as much as she wishes it would. Hell, the only reason she's even willing to consider snuggling up in a nest of blankets and trying to get a decent night's sleep is because Alex is here (and somewhere in there is a knight in shining armor joke that she just isn't quite ready to think about). Instead of staying where she is, she untangles herself from the blankets she had already nestled up in and reaches out for the hockey stick she had brought down earlier.
From the knocking on the window that's followed by the sound of the window shattering, Clara almost wishes that she'd listened to Alex and slept upstairs. Not that she'd tell him that, of course.
It's the sound of the first hit of flesh against wood that drew Clara up to her feet. The second hit, along with the distinct crack of the wood starting to give way, makes her back away slightly and hold the stick in front of her in a way that she's almost certain isn't the standard way to handle a hockey stick. Through the next few cracks, she just focuses on Alex in the desperate hope that maybe he has some sort of plan. She's about to ask in a hushed tone what they should do when the wood finally gives way and...it, because this thing definitely isn't a person, considering its complete lack of a face, is starting to come through the window.
"Alex!" Her next move isn't the smartest course of action, especially considering Alex is well over six feet tall and covered in graphene armor in comparison to Clara who is by no means small, but is much smaller than him and her best protection is lots of layers of fabric. Swinging the hockey stick almost blindly in front of her, she runs towards the thing with the hope that maybe, just maybe, she'll get a decent hit in and be of some help.
Punchy?
It gets through fast.
Next thing he knows, the thing busts its way in and it lurches forward in a rippling motion, something that should've been the head/neck area splitting open to reveal a gaping row of teeth. Fangs. The word he wants is "fangs" and he has a split second to gasp "holy christ!" before that damn mouth lunges at his arm. Alex instinctively braces for impact, for teeth to tear into his flesh and rip his arm off. It doesn't happen.
What does happen is the thing is now latched onto the armor, teeth squealing against the plating and leaving deepening gouges as it worries at him like a dog. It doesn't hurt. It should. He should be screaming bloody murder. Trying to jerk his arm free, Alex catches sight of Clara running at the thing with her hockey stick...and she, on the other hand, is a lot more squishy than he is.
"Clara, stop!" Alex gasps. The hockey stick bounces off the monster's head a few times before it lets go and decides to snap at Clara with a click of its fangs.
no subject
It doesn't stop him from leaping to the aid of anyone he hears, though. Repeated failure - no, the repeated kack of success - never did. If there's one thing Punchy has spades of, it's resilience.
The dark of night doesn't do much to make visibility any worse - the fog's deep enough that he can barely see his own feet anyway. It's a miracle that Punchy's able to navigate with his ears, given the untold damage he's done to them through the last five years of too-loud gangsta rap amplified through a variety of high-end speakers with very little reprieve. It's even more surprising given that the fog obscures sound only slightly less than sight; even the sharpest noises seem dampened, as if coming from inside an metal drum a hundred yards away. Punchy walks over dead grass that should crackle under his feet and only hears dull rustling.
That dull rustling turns into the thumps of footfall as he runs towards the sound of breaking glass. He's not even that far away, and the house seems to just pop up right in front of him so fast he almost runs into it, but thankfully he's close enough to the broken window that he can just vault on into it and land in the same room as the woman and the metal man getting attacked by...something.
He throws himself headlong into it, ducking under the hockey stick whipping about and grabbing the walker around the waist. He yanks back, and both monster and unlikely would-be hero of a redheaded teenager with freckles on only one side of his face topple backwards. It's not exactly the smoothest of introductions, especially when the monster is writhing about like a fish and clawing at Punchy's bare forearms. Spittle flies from its hellish maw.
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After what feels like an eternity, but is probably closer to a few seconds, she finally springs to action. Which, alright, might not be the biggest help, but Clara doesn't know what to do in these types of situations. The only things she has any real experience trying to kill for getting into the house are bugs, and sure, she doesn't like most bugs, but most of them also don't have mouths that look like they should be on a shark instead of a vaguely humanoid creature that looked like it clawed its way out of a nightmare. She moves to stand above the heads of both the boy and the monster, and puts the blade of the hockey stick into the thing's mouth. With all the strength she can muster, she slams the stick (and, along with it, the creature's head) to the side and into the ground, hoping to avoid the kid's head.
Which, okay, doesn't seem to really daze the creature as much as she hoped it would, but its jaws aren't snapping as much as they were before since there's wood in the way (though she's well aware that it probably won't last for very long). In a last ditch effort to get its head to hold still, she puts her booted foot over where its eyes should be before shooting Alex a panicked look that screamed I don't know what else to do.
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He moves forward with an urgent purring of stabilizers. He doesn't have a weapon, the hockey stick won't hold forever and the monster (he could say "animal", but c'mon, look at this thing) is downright pissed. If this was Detroit, he'd have a gun or he could call backup or use something better than his bare hands. It takes Alex another second to realize he's not exactly unarmed: he might not be able to get out of this suit but he knows it's heavy. It's armored. The plating looks like you could find it on a tank. Besides, he's not sure if he's even got a foot inside it for the thing to chew on.
Alex lifts his leg, the HUD he can't get rid of targeting the thrashing head with this little red reticule that jerks around. It says something about _CALCULATING ANGLES and _RECOMMENDED FORCE and he assume the suit knows what it's doing because he's just running with it. He prays he doesn't nail the kid instead. His foot comes down. No trembling, no wobbling from balance.
It hits perfectly the first time...and it lands a lot harder than he thought it would.
Something crunching underneath his foot with a wet thud. It collapses like it's just a cardboard box with a freaky, nauseating give. Something spurts out with a squelch. The monster twitches a few times in the kid's arms before finally going slack. Alex pulls back, skin drawn tight over a face that's gone a few shades paler, and he has to resist the urge to check if he has some of the thing's brains and teeth stuck to his foot.
"You guys okay?" His voice comes out in what Alex recognizes as another sign of Cop Mode: controlled, a careful flatline. He reaches over to touch Clara's hand lightly, putting himself between her and the kid, just in case. "Thanks."
Alex holds out his hand toward Punchy, offering to help him up.
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Thankfully, Punchy has a strong stomach. He needs it when pieces of the creature's brain (or whatever it is) splatters across his bare throat. It is, to put it as simply as possible, gross, and the sudden slackness to the beast isn't nearly as comforting as it really should be. It feels too much like a corpse. Punchy's felt too many corpses in his arms for a kid his age for that be any comfort at all.
Mulishly, he shoves it off him and refuses Alex's help getting up, although he's hardly in a pose that telegraphs "danger" to anyone looking. He looks as if he's getting up from tripping on the football field when he actually looks at the two people he rescued (as he considers it) in the full. It's as if he doesn't even remember that there's a dead monster slumped right next to him on the floor.
For a moment, he ignores his raging hormones and instead casts his attention to the overgrown tin man before him.
"Shit, man. Are you a robot?" Because if he is, Punchy wants to pop a panel or something and starts fiddling around. Does he have USB drives? Punchy looks Alex up and down, the light of curiosity brightening up a face made flush by exertion.
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"I'm fine," Clara murmurs in that tone that says I'm not really fine. Nothing about this is fine as she clings to the hand Alex has placed on her's as she clutches to the hockey stick with her other hand. It isn't a total lie, at least, considering that she's completely fine physically. But being physically fine doesn't change the fact that her mind is racing and her heart's pounding and she's completely terrified of what might come through the window next. Enough to the point that she almost forgets about their teenaged intruder/rescuer.
That is, until the kid speaks. It takes a moment for his question to pierce through the fog in her head that's been brought on by seeing Alex crush a probably-living nightmare creature's skull with his foot like it was nothing more than a bug in their kitchen. But once it does, something lights up in her eyes that's a mix of anger, disappointment, and a pinch of sadness that might be a little bit closer to grief.
"He's a person," Clara says in a way that's almost weary, like she's had this conversation a million times and will probably have to keep having it with people who are close to total strangers. She isn't exactly denying it, considering she's well aware of the fact that the proper thing to say is that he's technically a cyborg. It's one of those words that she still struggles to mentally link to Alex. "More importantly, he's my husband," she points out, as if that might make him stop thinking about doing whatever has come to mind that brought that curious look onto his face.
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